Rename: Xen Syndrome

This really isn't a good trope name; it's verbally clunky, opaque in meaning and not a pre-existing term.

Suggested rename title: Late Game Doldrums

The hell is a doldrum?

dol·drums (dldrmz, dôl-, dl-) pl.n. (used with a sing. or pl. verb) a. A period of stagnation or slump. b. A period of depression or unhappy listlessness.

Phoned In The Ending. or Phoned In The Last Levels

Doldrums: A proud resident of the English dictionary for nearly 200 years.

The word doldrum was first coined by the seafaring explorers. The areas between the Tropics and the Equator don't have very strong winds, so explorers often found themselves slowing down significantly to the point of making very little travel while heading through them. Usually, they were at the mercy of where the water currents took them, since they had no wind to pull the sails.

Phoned In The Ending.

Phoned In The Last Levels since this is EXCLUSIVELY a video game trope.

That works, too.

I like Phoned In The Last Level. Keep it singular so that it can be pluralized with {{ }}.

edited 5th Oct '10 11:12:23 AM by Fighteer

Bad Last Levels. I'm surprised the last rename attempt fell through, because I've seen several people come in and state Xen wasn't bad.

edited 5th Oct '10 11:18:00 AM by JackMackerel

When I played Half Life, I never knew that the Xen level was supposed to be a Scrappy Level, so I just played it and dealt with it. The jumping puzzles were annoying as fuck, though.

The only problem I ever had with the jumping puzzles was the Gonarch tossing me into the hole in the middle of her island.

105 wicks, 1209 inbound links. Those are fairly big, so there needs to be a better reason than that the name seems clunky.

edited 5th Oct '10 11:52:34 AM by Comonad

Making the current name a redirect will preserve those inbounds. It's a bad name for several reasons:

• If you haven't played that particular game, "Xen" means nothing.
• Whether that namer level is even an example appears to be subjective.
• "Syndrome" adds no context at all — "syndrome" simply means "a group of characteristics or symptoms that commonly occur together." For someone who does know the Xen levels, the syndrome could easily be "lots of jumping and unbalanced gameplay" not "levels late in the game that are noticeably worse to play than earlier levels because they were rushed during development." In fact one of the subpoints under the Xen entry itself makes this assumption:
  The Half-Life expansion, Blue Shift, averts this in a long Xen level that features far less jumping puzzles and many more, much larger areas than its predecessor. The areas are also accented with more set peices like waterfalls and new rock structures, giving it much more detail.

edited 5th Oct '10 12:18:37 PM by Madrugada

I also vote for Phoned In The Last Levels.

^^ Actually, the first bullet point said "Xen from Half-Life is the Trope Namer. With annoying jumping puzzles..." So in this particular case, bad jumping puzzles and unbalanced gameplay are claimed to be the reason why it is an example of Xen Syndrome.

This example is as correct as saying that "Assassins Creed 2 averts Xen Syndrome by having as much stealth late in the game as in the beginning." ( AC 1 is noted for the lack of them)

Even if the inbounds would keep leading to the page, there were at least a thousand gamers who read the current title and probably some of them keep spreading it on forums. You know very well that we need more than your hypothetical misunderstandings to change it.

I agree that the syndrome part is a redundant, bad title element, I always shoot these down in the YKTTW, and I would agre to removing it from a longer title, but not if it means making up a completely new one.

edited 5th Oct '10 3:00:19 PM by EternalSeptember

How about just Rushed Last Levels?

That sounds like a timer speeds up or that the later levels hurry the player somehow.

Endgame Quality Drop?

If I understand correctly, inbound link count is more a measure of how the name is doing than something we need to worry about damaging. If we could just dismiss inbound links like that, they wouldn't be listed as the first reason not to rename a trope on the guideline page. The idea is that if the name can spread that much, it's doing its job. So an argument that the name is bad and shouldn't work needs to be able to counteract the evidence that it's working.

That means arguments like the name being clunky and "syndrome" being a bad name element aren't good enough reasons to change a healthy name, even though I don't think anyone disagrees that they're true.

The argument that people might think it means something else about Xen would work, but there needs to be evidence that it's actually happening to a significant degree and causing enough misuse.

Just a suggestion and may be too punny, but: Final Level Xen (Zen? Xen? Get it?)

Seconding Endgame Quality Drop.

Lame Endgame?

I never knew that the Xen level was supposed to be a Scrappy Level, so I just played it and dealt with it. The jumping puzzles were annoying as fuck, though.

I'm surprised everyone remembers those and not that weird-ass puzzle where you had to open the claw-things on top of the mushroom-things and then free the shiny 2D diamonds so they can fly to the claws and get you a teleporter. Which can only be solved at the point you're just wandering around the room hitting the 'use' key at random.

Xen's about as classic an example as the infamous Volcano from Far Cry (in the latter case, even the devs admitted everyone who hadn't given up when the Trigens first appeared gave up there), and if we're going by links = good title (as we do for utterly opaque titles like Cowboy BeBop at His Computer or the various Japanese-language trope names), I can't really see how there's a good case for renaming rather than installing a redirect.

edited 6th Oct '10 12:39:09 AM by Evilest_Tim